A Show at the Vatican

Well, currently I’m in South Africa, but I’ll catch you up on the rest of my travels in Europe.

Our last full day in Rome was an early one. We woke up and got to St. Peter’s Basilica at 7ish to meet Jeremy and Fr. Ryan. Fr. Ryan brought us into the Basilica and celebrated Mass for us at the Sacred Heart side altar. There are many many side altars in this Basilica and during the morning many priests are celebrating Mass here. As we were walking through we must have past a couple priests celebrating at various parts of Mass. After Mass, Fr. Ryan had to get back to the college and Jeremy had to go take an exam (he was so kind to be visiting us during his study time), so they directed us off to the Wednesday Papal Audience. We got in at about 8:30 am and it didn’t start until 10:30. We thought Benedict might walk down the aisle again, so we got a seat right next to the aisle. It would have been perfect if he did walk down the aisle, but I guess he doesn’t do that much at Wednesday Audiences. Oh well. We had quite the entertainment while we waited for two hours though. In the front is where newly married people can sit and one married couple from Mexico brought the whole wedding party and their mariachi band, so they played for us a lot! There were also a few other musical groups there too. After the Holy Father came in, we actually saw some man jump the barrier. He wasn’t trying to do anything, he was just holding holy cards and knelt in the aisle, but the Swiss Guard ran up pretty fast and walked him away. Holy Father gave his address and then a cardinal or other priest would come up each one at a time in different languages and introduced people/countries that spoke that language. Usually one or two groups would sing or play when they were announced too. The last group had a little something special! They brought their juggling group in stage to perform. It was so great! Benedict was so great too, just watching them and smiling. The last thing they did was bring out a baby lion for Benedict to pet. It was so precious! I guess all that isn’t the norm though; Fr. Ryan said we got quite a show. After that Benedict closed with blessing any religious items and family members back home (so if you’re family you got a blessing!) From there we went to get lunch and I was starving! We found a little pizza place and I had two huge slices. Ohhhh, it was sooo good though. Then we went to this really good and cheap gelato place my friend Kalene recommend called Old Bridge (thanks Kalene). Yum, I love gelato. I got pistachio and chocolate. While eating it we meandered over to the Basilica to bask in the sun until we met up with Fr. Ryan and Jeremy again. Yes, it was sunny and it was fantastic! We met Fr. Ryan and Jeremy at 1:45 and they took us into the Basilica to give us a tour. The Basilica is huge, but it really is huger than it looks. When it was designed they wanted to make it a huge place to worship the Lord, but they also did not want the vastness of it to take away or distract from prayer or worship, so they used tricks to make things seem smaller than they seemed. An example is the two lines of script on the top of the Basilica. The lower one is six feet tall (we could stand inside of one of the O’s) and the higher one is eight feet tall, but they both look the same size. The coolest thing about this is that it comes back to our church too. The Catholic Church is huge, but we each have our own communities and parishes in which we can grow without being distracted by the vastness of our church. Fr. Ryan told us a bunch of stuff and I really could type for quite a while, but I’ll just tell you the good stuff. We did get to see the Pieta (the statue of Mary holding Jesus when he came down from the cross) carved by Michelangelo when he was 17. We also went to look at the main altar on which the Holy Father celebrates Mass. that St. Peter’s bones are actually right under the altar! They found and verified that they are St. Peter’s bones. The most interesting thing I learned is that they didn’t find any feet bones with the other ones. The reason is because St. Peter was crucified upside down because he did not feel worthy enough to be crucified right side up like Christ and when people are crucified upside down their ankles bones often dislocate. When they take them down from the cross they often have to cut off their feet. Right in the ceiling above the altar is a picture of God the Father looking down on His creation, then Christ the Son is present in the Eucharist on the altar, then the Holy Spirit which is the love between the Father and Son is a painting of a dove above the altar. They all form a line going straight down connecting all three of them, but then also in line with them are St. Peter’s bones, also symbolizing all of humanity and how we are also in line with God. That might have been my favorite part. Wait, one more thing! There are quite a few tombs in and under the Basilica, but two of the tombs we saw above in the Basilica were two tombs of previous Popes and you can actually see their bodies! They’re touched up very little because they are incorruptible. The Church believes that our bodies and souls are good and our bodies will someday be resurrected even after we die, but for these people, they were so holy that even in death their bodies remain intact. Crazy! K, so then after that we saw more tombs underneath, including John Paul II and then we headed over to the Vatican museums. We kinda rushed through them, but we got to see the Sistine Chapel and that was pretty awesome. So yea, that’s pretty much how we finished up our time in Rome!

The next day we caught a plane to Athens at 11ish? We landed about two and found our hostel without too much problems except an older Greek man yelling at us in Greek because our luggage was on the seat and he wanted to sit down. Whoops, our bad. Athens was a lot different than any of the other countries we visited. For one it’s warm! It also really a different landscape. There are a lot of mountains and a lot of olive trees. We got in and met my roommate Katie’s friend and checked out one of the Olympic Stadiums that was built for the first modern Olympics. I chose to jump the fence and take a picture in the track starting stance, but later found people aren’t really allowed to go in there. I know, I’m such a rebel. Ha. J We had Gyros for dinner, yum yum and then kinda pooped out at our hostel. The next day we took a walking tour and really learned about the city. We walked up to the Acropolis where the Parthenon is and saw other various ruins around the city. We saw the guards in front of the Parliament who wear skirts and do funny kicking ballet type movements when they do the changing of the guard. Seriously! Our tour group also attracted two stray dogs. That’s the thing about this city-there are a lot of stray dogs and cats. When the more recent Olympics were here they rounded all of them up, put collars on them, spayed and neutered them, gave them shots and then let them loose again. The people of the city take care of them and feed them and they are really nice dogs. What happens though is they’ll usually join you walking- especially if you’re in a group. They think that you’re their pack and they kinda even protect you. After the tour we were starving, so we got some spinakopita and then went to look at this little village. Now, contrary to what I was thinking, not all of Greece looks like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, that’s only found in the islands, but there is a tiny little village here in Athens that looks like that right next to Acropolis, so we went to check it out. Pretty cool! Then we went to the markets…very fun! Lastly, that night we got dinner for 10 Euro that was a bunch of food! It included cheese and meat wrapped in pastry dough, fried cheese, fries, fresh salad, bread, meatballs, fried zucchini, large beans in sauce, pork, and a sweet cake dessert. The next morning I flew out to South Africa and that concludes my Europe trip. I do have a story to tell about my flight and I’ll tell you all more about South Africa, but you probably have had enough reading to do for now. Ciao!